DEATH PENALTY: Japan Needs Public Debate

By Suvendrini Kakuchi Reprint | | Print |

Suvendrini Kakuchi

TOKYO, Jul 31 2006 (IPS) - A rare essay posted on the web by a crime victim who does not call for the death penalty for the culprit has become a potent symbol for activists who face an uphill battle to abolish Japan’s capital punishment laws.

Yumiko Yamaguchi who was slashed on her face by a 16-year-old boy when he went on a rampage on a public bus six years ago is now over 50 and in a contemplative mood. After reflection, Yamaguchi says she does not seek retribution, but an apology.

“While I am not yet an advocate of abolishing capital punishment, what victims of crime deeply wish for is for the criminal to repent what he has done and apologize to the people he has hurt, a process that will stop heinous crimes in the long run. This can not be achieved by sentencing him to death,” she wrote on her website.

The boy, a psychiatric patient, was arrested for murdering one passenger, Yamaguchi’s friend, and injuring several others. Sentenced to a medical treatment facility in 2000, he was released this March.

Most important for rights activists is Yamaguchi also writes that while she continues to grapple with her ordeal, she realizes the death penalty will neither ease the pain of crime victims nor stop further crime, opinions that represents key arguments against capital punishment.

“Attempts by victims to discuss the death penalty in public is particularly important to us today given that support for sending criminals to the gallows is growing these past few years,” Kaori Sakagami, a writer and researcher on the death penalty in Japan told IPS.

According to activists like Sakagami, Yamaguchi represents one of only a handful of voices in Japan that courageously call for a public debate on the death penalty despite high approval ratings. Some 81 percent of the public support the death penalty; of that, 60.3 percent said the death penalty is necessary to deter heavy crimes.

Yamaguchi’s attempts at opening a public discussion by hearing from the victims themselves are urgently needed against the growing call from sensationalist media for harsher penalties against criminals, Sakagami said. There are currently 150 prisoners on death row including those appealing their sentences, say activists. Between 1993 and 2004, 47 criminals were executed.

Still, activists like Sakagami and Amnesty International Japan point out that the call for harsher sentencing comes at a time when crime has fallen in Japan. The Justice Ministry latest report cites 22, 568 serious crimes in 2004 a decrease of 1,403 from the previous year. Violent crimes, including murder but not theft, comprise 3.5 percent of the total.

“Opinions from crime victims that illustrate the futility of the death penalty are crucial to us against growing anger over high profile murders committed these past few years. Media sensationalizing murders has contributed to hardened views against the possibility of social rehabilitation to criminals,” Akiko Takada, spokesperson for Forum Against Death Penalty, a leading anti-death penalty group told IPS.

Indeed, activists took a beating in June when Japan reacted with hysteria when the court handed down life imprisonment for Jose Torres Yagi, 34, a Peruvian worker who was found guilty for sexual molestation and murder of an eight-year-old girl last November.

Devastated family members are now demanding the death penalty for Yagi. They have found support on television and in newspaper editorials. News reports focus heavily on the sexual abuse of the murdered girl that was revealed by her father after the verdict.

“The court should have given more consideration to the criteria,” wrote the Asahi Newspaper, a liberal newspaper, on July 5th, commenting on the court verdict and referring to the “disturbing rash of brutal crimes against children” and “serious anxiety among parents” that have gone unnoticed in the court verdict.

Yet another high profile case that has upset activists is the media support for a 30-year-old man known only as Hiroshi who lobbies passionately for the death penalty for the defendant who received life imprisonment for raping and killing Hiroshi’s wife and 11 month-old daughter.

“The death penalty alone will not alleviate my pain. I want the defendant to come to terms with the gravity of the crime he committed through the fear that he too may be killed,” Hiroshi told sympathetic newscasters last month.

Hiroshi has forced the Hiroshima High Court to review its March 2002 life sentence handed down to the killer who was 18-years old at the time and a victim of severe child abuse.

The decision by the Hiroshima court to hold a hearing instead of simply reviewing the dossier as is the norm reflects the heavy lobbying by the husband and media, said Sakagami, the crime writer.

Recent mass media attention on the cruelty of the crime and the pain of the victims is a cheap tactic to gain high public ratings rather than encourage an objective debate on the death penalty, she added.

“The danger of this disturbing trend is the emotion of crime victims could influence court rulings as is the Hiroshima case,” she told IPS.

Lawyer Kikuta Koichi said some victims of crime prefer the death penalty because life imprisonment in Japan permits the release of criminals.

“Life imprisonment as in the case of Yagi, provides conditions for parole after completing a decade in prison, which is why it is rejected by traumatized victims, making the death penalty their only option,”” he told IPS.

While the death penalty remains a high preference in Japan, lawyers on both sides of the argument acknowledge a national debate, started by victims like Yamaguchi, is important.

“Victims must be able to participate in trials and have access to the defendant. Only then can Japan be ready to debate capital punishment,” he said.